Comedian Wanda Sykes told Jimmy Kimmel that she reacted to her canceled appearance on his late night series last year by drinking martinis with a friend, joking, “When life hands you lemons, you make martinis with a lemon twist.”
Sykes was one of Kimmel’s scheduled guests the day he learned Disney and ABC had pulled his show off the air in September, following calls for his firing from President Trump over comments related to the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk. According to Sykes, she was just about to get in her car to head over to Kimmel’s set when she got a call from her publicist.
“My publicist called and said, ‘Don’t get in the car. They’re preempting the show,’” she recalled. “I was like, ‘What?’ She was like, ‘It’s something with Trump and everything and Jimmy’s not on the air tonight.’ I was like, ‘What the hell?’” In response, Kimmel joked, “That was my reaction.”
“It was like, ‘Wait a minute, is this really happening? Is this really going down like this?’” Sykes added. “I was at my friend’s, so we just went back inside and she made martinis. Because when life hands you lemons, you make martinis with a lemon twist.” Kimmel, meanwhile, shared that Sykes was one of the first people he texted after he heard the news.
“I texted you back all kinds of crazy stuff. Like, ‘You want us to roll through?’ And you know what that means in the hood,” Sykes said with a laugh. “And it’s like, ‘Oh, what am I doing? I don’t hang out with roll-through people! What am I talking about?’”
Pivoting away from his brief suspension last year, Kimmel asked Sykes point-blank if she has been “satisfied” with Trump’s job performance as president.
“Have you had martinis with lemon twists?” the comedian replied. She went on to note that, while she used to joke about Trump being the first president not to age while in office, she does not believe that is the case anymore.
“Age is catching up with him now,” she observed. “You see that. He’s falling asleep standing up.” Kimmel followed that observation up by asking Sykes what the biggest thing is that Trump makes her worry about.
“Everything!” Sykes responded. “The Hantavirus. I heard about it here and there. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal,’ until I heard him talk about it. He’s like, ‘Well, it’s under control. We got a good grip on it. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s under control.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re all going to die by the Hantavirus!’ I wasn’t concerned about it until he started talking about it.”
